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People, Etc.

February 4, 2016By Sarah Weinman

At Ingram Content Group, chief information officer Pep Carrera will change roles and become chief operating officer at their VitalSource Technologies unit, relocating to Raleigh, NC. In turn, VitalSource coo Kent Freeman will take on the newly-created role of chief strategy and development officer, “supporting Ingram’s continued transformation and leading the delivery, management and incubation of Ingram’s future successful strategic partnerships and products.”
At Penguin Young Readers’ sales department, Cristi Navarro has been promoted to director of national accounts.

Kevin Cotter has joined Anonymous Content as director of literary affairs. Previously he worked in a similar role at Floren Shieh Productions.

Catapult has added Marie-Helene Bertino, Daniel José Older, and Joanna Walsh as regularly contributing web editors, and Nicole Chung will be guest series editor this spring, curating an essay series around adoption.

CBS executive chairman Sumner Redstone resigned and was named chairman emeritus, with ceo Leslie Moonvestaking on the additional role of chairman of the board. The stock market welcomed the news, moving CBS up by close to $2 a share.

Grants
The Whiting Foundation has launched the Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant, which will award $35,000 each to as many as three writers, currently under contract to a publisher and at least two years into their work. The foundation will accept submissions for works of history, cultural or political reportage, biography, memoir, the sciences, philosophy, criticism, food or travel writing, and personal essays, among other categories until May 1. The grantees will be announced in the fall.

InitiativesHachette Book Group issued its annual progress report on environmental goals for 2014 (the latest full year results that are available). Its overall carbon footprint actually rose rather than falling, by 9 percent, in 2014. That was due in part to a 20% increase in ground product transportation as they shipped more printed books. But they say they still “hit our targeted 50 percent reduction” from the baseline over three years. HBG said it was “well beyond its target” in using forest stewardship certified paper (with nearly 99.7 percent of its overall paper use from certified fiber), increased its recycled paper usage by 1.5 percent to 10.5 percent of overall paper use; reduced energy consumption in its New York office by 70 percent in 2015; and also reduced printer paper usage by 90,000 sheets.

Contests
HarperAudio and NYU Tisch School of the Arts announced a radio drama contest open to currently enrolled undergraduate and graduate students and alumni (who graduated no earlier than 2013) of the university’s Goldberg Department of Dramatic Writing. The contest will take submissions until March 1, with the winners announced on April 7.